


Disintegration

by TeenageCriminalMastermind



Category: The Society (TV 2019)
Genre: Disintegration, Enemies to Lovers, Everything is Beautiful and Everything Hurts, F/M, Inspired by The Cure's "The Same Deep Water As You", Inspired by a The Cure song, The Author Regrets Nothing, The Cure, They have HISTORY, and he isn't sure he hates her or loves her, harry has some thoughts the night of prom
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-20
Updated: 2020-03-20
Packaged: 2021-03-01 01:35:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,553
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23237053
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TeenageCriminalMastermind/pseuds/TeenageCriminalMastermind
Summary: The Cure plays on repeat somewhere in the distance, and Harry lies on his bed, head both far too empty and crammed. He loathed her, sure, but he didn’t want her to die. Her death has undone the fragile web of normalcy they’d woven, and everything is disintegrating.Somewhere, he is too.
Relationships: Harry Bingham/Cassandra Pressman
Comments: 9
Kudos: 26





	Disintegration

They needed someone to move the body.

More like Gordie gave him and the Guard a frantic call, breathless and rambling, telling them that there was a _pool of blood_ and _Cassandra_ and he tried 911 out of habit but _of course no one picked up_ and he needs someone to move her so that he can ascertain the cause of death. 

They arrive at the scene in Harry’s Maserati and Clark’s Jeep, the former’s headlights casting a harsh spotlight on Gordie and the figure beside him. As they step out, Gordie greets them with a trembling, tight hug, face streaked with tears. But Harry’s gaze has gravitated towards his left. She’s just lying there - pale, prone, glassy-eyed. There’s shock and pain and fear etched on her face and the crimson pool around her is expanding and Harry wants to hurl. He darts for the bush closest to him, his stomach emptying all of its contents of vodka and punch and whiskey, and it kind of feels like a stomach pump as he walks back, jelly-legged and clear-headed. 

“Harry,” a voice calls. It’s Grizz. “The back door.” Thank god the other four have picked her up, because he doesn’t have it in him to feel her soft skin cold under his fingers. To feel that blood stained gossamer, sticky and warm and soft, staining his hands. They place her in the back seat and he takes his place at the wheel and books it as soon as the door closes, not caring about the others. He fights the impulse to look back at her, a small part of his brain saying that maybe, just maybe if he turns, she might be breathing. Like Orpheus. _Eurydice disappeared because he turned his head too early, you fucking idiot._ So he keeps his eyes on the road and his hands on the wheel, slowing down into his driveway. 

As soon as the engine cuts, he steps out of the driver’s seat and opens the door to the back. _Maybe, just maybe_. But her eyes are still glassy and her skin is still ice and her chest doesn’t rise even once in the eternity that he stares at her for. With trembling fingers, he wipes away the blood from the leather seats and puts his arms under her body, lifting her up and carrying her into his house, over the threshold like Hades and Persephone. She has the blonde hair and blue eyes and the _infuriating_ attitude, and he has the dark hair and the brooding demeanor and gold for it. 

He climbs the stairs in a trance, her blood marking every stair like a trail of breadcrumbs, and when he reaches his bedroom, he puts her down between his sheets and pillows. He can’t bear to look into those dead eyes anymore, so he shuts them, pulling her hair out of the bun - _don’t want her royal highness getting a crick in her neck_. Cassandra, with her mythical name and her annoying personality befitting of a Greek god. She smells like fucking roses and lilies, even in death, and the realisation makes him laugh. Not a soft chuckle, but a belly laugh, one that echoes through the house like a madman’s howl. He’s worried about her getting a crick in the neck and how she still smells like a garden while she has two bullets in her, and his concern for a person he publicly loathes is fucking hilarious to him. 

The sound brings the rest of the boys upstairs, and he can hear through the thick fog in his brain that they want to move her to a hospital. _For an autopsy_. But she’s Persephone and he’s Hades and this is his realm, and no one can take her away from him. All the same, he is powerless when Jason and Clark and Luke pick her up and load her in Clark’s Jeep because _Harry is very clearly out of his fucking mind_ and cannot be relied upon to get a glass of water right now, much less drive. 

Once they’re gone, he crawls into bed to take her place and lies in her spot, upon the bloodied sheets that remind him of roses. It doesn’t help that they smell like it too, and he takes in a deep breath, the metallic and floral scents forming a haze he can lose himself in. He closes his eyes and breathes in once more, curling up into himself. He doesn’t know why he feels hollow - all his life he can only remember hating her and wanting her to hurt as much as she’d made him, for her to feel the humiliation he felt by living in her shadow.

But she’s dead, and nothing can hurt her anymore. 

Except she’s still hurting him, and that he doesn’t understand - he hates her, _hates her, hates her_. He hates Cassandra Pressman with every fiber of his being, so why does her absence hurt so much?

“You look like shit.”

It’s Luke, standing in the doorway and Harry squints at the light that is now streaming into the room and straight onto his face; he still doesn’t want to move though - _can’t_ would be a better way to put it. There just isn’t any strength left in him to do anything much, but he still lifts his head to give Luke an insolent look. “Fuck you.”

“It’s her funeral, Harry.”

“Funeral.” The word feels bitter and funny on his tongue, like it doesn’t belong there. Luke is looking at him with pity, like he’s here to offer _him_ condolences. “What the fuck are you looking at me for like that?”

That look only intensifies, Luke taking a step forward. “Dude.”

“Shouldn’t you be at Allie’s? Offering her your deepest condolences and shit?” The sun feels like it’s burning his face. “It’s not like she meant anything to me, besides a fucking pain in the ass.” It still doesn’t deter the football player, and he keeps looking at Harry with those sorrowful eyes as he sits down on Harry’s bed. “I hated her, Holbrook.” He’s angry. “I hated her, I hated her, I hated her.” But he doesn’t sound angry anymore, not to himself. Tears prick at the back of his eyes, and he’s furiously wiping them away while trying to keep the anger in his voice. “I hated her, and now she’s fucking gone. I hated her, Luke. I hated Cassandra.” Except he doesn’t say her name in disgust, and he sounds more broken than angry. 

The Cure plays on repeat somewhere in the distance, and Harry lies on his bed, head both far empty and crammed. He loathed her, sure, but he didn’t want her to die. Her death has undone the fragile web of normalcy they’d woven, and everything is disintegrating.

Somewhere, he is too. 

Luke simply puts an arm around him, and whatever strength he had left leaves him as he shakes his head vigorously. “I hated her, Luke, and she left me alone. I hated Cassandra, and she fucking left me.” His tears fall free, staining the sheets and his jacket and Luke’s hoodie. He says it so many times the word feels foreign on his tongue. In his brain too, the words have twisted themselves. 

“I know.” 

He doesn’t know when or how, but Harry is now standing in front of a makeshift grave, in his bloodstained black suit and sunglasses that don’t adequately hide his sorry state. Allie is going on about how idealistic and righteous and fucking _perfect_ her sister was, but none of that really describes Cassandra accurately. 

She was annoyingly precise and a killjoy, and she was a rule breaker who studiously stuck to the rules she created. She was hypocritical, showing the world just how strong she was when she was fallible like everyone else. _She wouldn’t be dead if she wasn’t_. And she possessed the infuriating ability to get in your head and never leave. “Harry?” It’s Gordie - lovesick, foolish Gordie who adored her just like everyone who revolved around Little Miss Perfect. How he wished for Cassandra to kiss him, to give him the time of the day, but what Gordie didn’t know (or wilfully ignored) was that she’d never settle for a boring, vanilla dude with a nerdy sense of humour. 

“What?”

“We thought you might want to say something.”

“I’d rather not lie, thanks a fucking ton.” Because it’s a lot easier to come across as a dick who can’t be civil at a funeral than admit how dependent he was on her. There was a red string of fate that had tied them together that as tangled and fucked up it would get, was never supposed to break. Except it had, and now he was unmoored. They all peter out eventually, and Harry’s left in the beginning of a thunderstorm staring at a crude white cross and freshly turned dirt. 

“You already had all I wanted, and now you took all of me with you too, so I fucking hope you’re happy, Pressman.”

He’s walking away from her and it sounds like the dirt on her grave is shifting behind him, but he chalks it up to the storm playing tricks on him. Because he’s not Orpheus, and she’s never coming back. 

It’s just him disintegrating.

**Author's Note:**

> reviews and comments - good, bad and ugly - make me happy, so please leave one below!


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